today, at the age of thirty,
I became an orphan.

two empty seats will be at my graduation.
no family at Christmas.
the last living member in this lineage.
no brothers or sisters,
no aunts or uncles.

millions of years of evolution,
and natural selection,
will end when I die...
and I will have no family to mourn me,
as I mourn for my mother today.

and maybe it's better that way,
because no one else deserves
to feel the immense loss of death.